Is Purple the Color of the Sky When it Dies?
by Dark wolf's last day
Summary: When the clouds are burning or the world is being washed away before your eyes, who does your heart call out to?
1. I Left my Love in the River

First of all, let me say that this work is really special to me. I'm really, _really_ proud of it.

The title of chapter one is a lyric from _Next of Kin_ by Alvvays.

You can read all about my inspiration in the long, rambly note I have at the end of this fic.

My characterization of Hoenn characters is always a combination of their personalities from Emerald and their personalities from ORAS.

Enjoy!

* * *

Once you love someone—once you truly love someone, not just think that you do—, you can never stop. That's what Maxie learns.

Maxie, along with _everyone_ , is quite possibly about to die, and he's _still_ in love. It's raining so hard that the drops of water hurt when they touch bare skin, bruising, and Maxie feels slimy and slippery, wetter than he has _ever_ felt before. Anyone who knows Maxie would know that he _hates_ being wet, but all that he can think about now, as the ground in Sootopolis City is becoming lost in water, as the waves are coming in so strong that he keeps losing his balance, is a scene from ten, fifteen years ago.

All Maxie can think about is when he and Archie had gotten caught out in the rain one day when they were _so_ young, and he had hissed and prickled like a sopping Delcatty while Archie had laughed and kissed him and spun him around. Maxie suddenly feels so dizzy, so destroyed and defeated by his situation that he doesn't feel like himself anymore.

Even though that memory won't save him or _anyone_ , even though the water is rising, aggressive and angry, it's all that Maxie can think about. In normal circumstances, he'd curse nostalgia and burn the ashes, but he has developed a nearly spiteful apathy in this heavy rain; he doesn't _care_ about locking this softer, barer version of himself away from the world. He loves Archie, always has, and no amount of grinding at his skin with sandpaper has changed this.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't piss Maxie off that he feels like this, though. Because it does. He shouldn't love someone who is the reason why the Earth is drowning. Really, truly, he had tried to shed his love for Archie and become anew _years_ ago, but it hadn't worked; he and Archie are stuck together, entwined _forever_ , whether they want to be or not. He can't describe how he feels whenever he sees Archie: this mixture of _that's the person I love_ and _you destroyed me; you hurt me_ ; it's confusing and exhausting, and Maxie is…tired of it.

Archie, the curse that has invaded Maxie's thoughts in a time where he can hardly function over his internal sirens and alarms, is standing too far away and too close all at once. He has his arms wrapped around his midsection, and he looks distraught almost to the point of being ill. Maxie stares at him for a few moments, frozen in a moment of disbelief in reality and feeling, suddenly, like he's 22 again. 22 and afraid, open, idealistic, and naïve. 22, unsteady and unsure. He knows, then, that he has made _enough_ mistakes in his life not to reach out to the person he loves more than anyone else in what might just be their dying moments.

Though he doesn't really have a plan when he starts talking, Maxie really doesn't expect or want the first words that come out of his mouth to be, "Why couldn't you have just _stopped_ , Archie?"

Archie whips his head over in Maxie's direction, and the bystanders standing by the Cave of Origin shrink away, quite aware that this is entirely between Archie and Maxie. "How dare you say that to me?" Archie snarls, "You know just as well as I do that you would have done something similar if you had had the chance!" Archie turns around as he speaks, the movements making a watery _whoosh_. Maxie had expected him to look angry, but he mostly just looks miserable and hurt.

"No, I…" _Do you remember kissing me in the rain, Archie?_ "that's not what I wanted to say." Archie quirks an eyebrow. "We're…" the world is so wet, but Maxie's mouth feels so _dry_ , "...damn it, Archie! We might be about to die, and I still love you, you _impossible_ , _incorrigible_ …" Archie looks taken aback, eyes wide and posture loosened, "and…I just wanted you to know that I still do…."

Archie pulls Maxie into a hug, and suddenly, Maxie realizes that he's shivering. He can't quite tell if he's warmer in Archie's arms because he mostly just feels numb, but he does feel more mentally sound. "Fuck you, Maxie; I love you too," Archie tells him.

"My shoes are soaking wet, and it's all your fault," Maxie says in response, even though almost _all_ of him is wet, and Archie laughs.

"Sorry about that, Max." Archie kisses him lightly on the forehead, tilting his head upward. "Hey, do you remember the time that we got caught out in the rain and you complained for weeks about that one pair of shoes you had that got ruined?"

"I forgot about my shoes. I remember you laughing at my dramatics, though. I was just thinking about that before we started talking."

"I was too." Archie's smile is gentle and revealing, and Maxie's grip on him tightens.

 _Maybe this is why_ , Maxie thinks, _maybe we're on the same wavelength_. Two gamma rays, taking and taking and _taking_.

In one moment, Maxie's feet are touching the ground and he is enclosed in Archie's embrace, and in the next, the waves have taken him. He flails his arms around, trying not to panic but not particularly succeeding. Someone grabs onto him, inadvertently pushing him down a bit, and he gasps out of reflex, sending water into his mouth and down his throat. He kicks his legs and coughs and hacks, thinking, desperately, _I'm not a good enough swimmer for this; I'm going to die_.

"Maxie, Maxie, you're okay. You're okay," Archie says, his voice giving Maxie's mind something to latch onto as he thrashes and coughs and panics. Maxie's vision is blurred by the tears brought on by his coughing and Archie's face is streaked with water, but he thinks that he can see tears streaming down it. Maxie coughs some more until he feels like he can breathe again; Archie has one arm around him, trying to keep him close.

Without a word or any sort of preamble, Archie and Maxie slot their mouths together. It tastes like salt water, which is _terrible_ , and water splashes into and around their noses and linked lips, but Maxie doesn't _care_.

For a moment, all that envelops Maxie's senses is the sound of the roll and crash of waves, the sound of breath against skin, the press of cold, wet lips against each other, and the feeling of being completely, utterly soaked. He wishes that he could push away all of his thoughts and worries and even this catastrophic torrent with just these engrossing sensations. He wishes that he could put all of these sensations up as a barrier and skip past all of the stages of grief.

Maxie and Archie know, if the rain stops, if May succeeds, they will never let each other go again. Too many years of their lives have been ruined for ridiculous, terrible reasons; they _will_ get them back.

Archie maneuvers them over to the closest rock wall of Sootopolis City so that they can lean against it. Someone somewhere is crying, but Archie and Maxie ignore it.

Maxie can see, from the little spot that he and Archie have made for themselves in the deluge, that the citizens of Sootopolis are climbing onto their roofs, some crying and mourning surely-lost possessions. "This is my fault," Archie says softly, and Maxie knows now that he really is crying. He doesn't speak. He doesn't have anything to say about this whole thing, but then, does anyone really?

The water is filthy and ugly now, having picked up miscellaneous objects from all around Sootopolis City. When it was confined to where it had been before this storm, it had been rather clear; it was not unusual to be able to see water type Pokémon swimming around beneath the surface. Now, the water is a sickly brownish color; it looks malevolent.

The rain is something in itself, too. Maxie thinks that he has never seen raindrops this large or that fall as frequently or with as much force. They slam into the water like heavy objects—dense, _metal_ objects—falling from great heights, making the surface of the water ripple constantly, never having even a moment to breathe and smooth itself out.

(Dully, Maxie remembers some equation about force or inertia or possibly both; he would remember, could write the equation down and solve it given some pieces of information, if his mind wasn't racing with _everything else_. And wouldn't that be nice, if this situation could be solved with _equations_?)

It's then, though, that the rain stops, and Maxie and Archie look up and around with wide-eyes, blinking constantly as if they're hallucinating and seeing and sensing things that are not real.

"Maxie!"

"Archie!"

Together, "She did it!"

And May did: the rain has stopped falling. But, that doesn't mean that everything is magically reversed like some small, subconscious part of Maxie had foolishly thought. Sootopolis—and many other places, too, Maxie suspects—is flooded, and he and Archie still have these lifeless, disillusioned looks in their eyes that they didn't have when they were young and just learning what it meant to be in love.

They kiss again, and they don't stop until they hear something splash above the surface of the water. It's May returning from her venture, and for a moment, no one knows what to say. She looks stricken and somewhat alien, her Aqua Suit still on and her face partly concealed. Then, her eyes fall on Archie and Maxie, pressed so close together, and she smiles just the slightest bit, but it's crooked and _wrong_ , and Maxie feels guilty for swatting the innocence out of this child, even though this whole mess is Archie's fault more than his.

May opens her mouth to say something, but then, everyone seems to say, "May!" at the same time, and she is surrounded. She would have been bombarded by hugs, but such things are difficult to achieve in water, as Maxie now has personal experience of.

"I…what? Is everything…is everyone okay?" May asks, looking all around; her eyes focus and stall on a child around the age of four crying on a roof.

Everyone gives her space to breathe then, as she looks rather close to tears. May pulls a Pokéball out of her sodden bag and balances it on her palm, letting everyone see. Maxie and Archie know immediately which Pokémon is inside.

"You caught Kyogre?" Archie asks, astonished, and May nods, looking at the Pokéball like it's horrible and disgusting.

"If I hadn't…if I hadn't tried to catch Kyogre…the water wouldn't be this high," May stares at her hand for a while, her palm loose as if she wants the Pokéball to slip out and sink to the bottom of the ocean so that she never has to look at it or the creature inside ever again.

"May, no, you saved everyone," Archie says. "This is _my_ fault."

"But I could have—!" May shouts, "I could have done more! If I hadn't…." Archie pulls May into a tight, crushing, and apologetic hug, water, Aqua Suit, and all.

"I'm really sorry, May." May makes a hum of acknowledgement, still looking off into the distance, thinking. "Thank you so much for…for everything," Archie says before ending the hug.

The sun is shining bright now, and the sunlight is reflecting off of all of the water in Sootopolis, making it look dreamlike and ethereal. From a broader perspective, though, in which one considers _how much_ water there is and _why_ it's all there, the scene looks eerie and perturbing. Sootopolis City in these moments feels like some sort of median between peaceful and dead, which is so harsh of a juxtaposition from just a few minutes ago. Several people take a few moments to stop and look across the city, thoughtful and maybe, also, afraid.

Archie and Maxie swim to the roof of a house together, connecting their hands loosely once they're there as if they're wary of the future. _Their_ future. Calls are being made to check on the state of the rest of the world, and Steven Stone seems to be trying to organize some mass movement of hospitalization and flood damage checking or something similar. There are too many things on his mind, too many things to do. Maxie thinks that he hears something about a plan to evaporate some of the water with the help of Pokémon who know moves like Sunny Day. Beside him, Archie rubs at his eyelids with his fists.

May swims over to the roof that Archie and Maxie have unofficially claimed as their own and sits as well, first taking off her Aqua Suit. Her hair and clothes are ruffled and wrinkled, which adds to the overall image she has of being exhausted and shaken. She has come over to this particular roof because she needs some space and it's the only one that's quiet. Archie and Maxie don't mind her company; they just want her to feel better.

After a few minutes, Archie gently and wordlessly kisses Maxie's cheek. Maxie snuggles in closer to him, and they both know what it means: a new start, _I'm never letting you go again_.

A Magikarp peeks above the surface of the water, and everything is returning to normal.


	2. Strike the Match, Strike the Match Now

The title is taken from Sia's _Fire Meet Gasoline_.

* * *

Everyone is standing as far away from each other as possible. Some are sniffling but trying to fight back their tears; they know that they need to preserve their energy and fluids. Archie is the first to damn all societal concepts of decency to hell, tossing off his clothing. In response to the judgemental stares he receives, Archie says, bitterly, "I'm not going to be the first to die out here." The sun is still hot, blazing, and torturous when Archie isn't clothed, but it is lessened, just slightly. Archie knows, though, that part of the deep hurt that he is feeling out in this unbearable shine is emotional: his life-force being sucked out by the love of his life. His life-force being sucked out by the light of his life turned malicious and _burning_ instead of pleasantly warm and comforting. Archie hates Maxie, but he still loves him _so_ much.

Archie thinks that this is what he'll feel in hell. Maxie might feel as if he's perpetually drowning: that was always Maxie's biggest fear, Archie knows. Remembers from fifteen years ago. He remembers helping him get over his fear so that he could teach him how to swim, and even then, he had refused to stick his head underwater; that was too much. Archie, meanwhile, had slid into the water like it was more natural and comfortable to him than walking on land and breathing air, bobbing and gliding through it like a Seel.

Back then, they had been happy and carefree. Archie remembers splashing Maxie with water and patting his ass when he swam by his legs; Maxie had protested, but that was part of what had made it fun. Sometimes, Archie would kiss Maxie while they were in the water and then mess up his hair with his hands. Maxie would shove at him or try to push him underwater, but Archie wouldn't do it back because he knew that Maxie wasn't comfortable as it was and he knew where the line was between being playful and being spiteful.

Love does not hurt as much as the heat caused by the supernaturally intense sunlight: to say so would be poetic and, simply, incorrect. Archie can feel this horrible twisting in his gut because of love that feels like guilt and regret and longing, but it does not compare to the burning and tingling he feels along his skin; the dizziness, pulsing, and throbbing he feels in his head; the feeling of being dehydrated, _evaporated_ as he stands. This pending death is ghastly, and Archie can see the water of Sootopolis sizzling and vaporizing at a rate that is alarming; the scene is reminiscent of a pot of boiling water, of water being heated in a controlled setting, not in one so open and vast. Archie feels hysterical, and Maxie is still standing there, fully clothed, panting like a Mightyena and sweating in that outfit that would honestly be too hot to wear even if this occult drought wasn't occurring.

"What are you doing?" Archie barks out at him. He really should be preserving his energy, not yelling and getting angry, but at this point, Archie kind of _wants_ to die, and he can't just let Maxie do this and be stubborn and proud even at this lowest point of lows.

"I deserve to die," Maxie responds.

"Shut the fuck up. You're not leaving me, you ass. You're already sucking all of the moisture out of the Earth, you can at least do me the favor of sticking around."

"What?"

"I love you, you dick! And I don't think _anyone_ here wants to see you die, especially me." Archie and Maxie look around at the small ensemble outside of the Cave of Origin; they're all distressingly still, their only movements seeming to be their eyes flitting around and, if they're still wearing them, their thumbs flicking at the elastic in their underwear, contemplating whether or not they should take them off.

After blinking a few times, Maxie begins to remove his clothing. Looking at Maxie's newly bare shoulders, Archie says, "I remember that you tan really well even though you're so pale. I think this might burn you, though, Max." Maxie looks up at him, surprised.

He almost says something about how he remembers the way that Archie would jerk and twitch when he trailed his fingernails down his spine in a certain way, but he recognizes that this might not be the best memory to resurface at the present moment. "I remember that all of your skin is soft except for your fingers because you ride Carvanhas and Sharpedos all the time. I've still never figured out how you do it," Maxie settles on after a moment of thought.

"…You think my skin is soft?" Archie asks after a moment.

"Yes," Maxie answers, and the two take a moment to look at each other. "I love you too, you know," Maxie divulges, looking tired and devastated. Archie notices the bags under Maxie's eyes; he had seen them before, but he had never _comprehended_ them until now; they look like they run deep and ancient into his skin. How long had they been there? Archie can't remember first seeing them. His mind flashes forth an image of Maxie when he was younger, wrinkleless with bags just a fraction of the size they are now under his eyes. Archie suddenly doesn't feel angry anymore: just hurt and worn out. "I'm really…really sorry, Archie," Maxie says, attempting to drag a hand down his face but just having it slip and slide as if it had been greased because of all of the sweat accumulated on both his hand and his face. Maxie breathes out a sigh, and it feels like his lungs are balloons that have floated too high, too close to the sun and are ready to pop.

Archie has always had a low heat tolerance, and he feels unsteady on his feet as he stands out in the amplified sun. His vision is blurred, and he is reminded of fires, how just overtop of them you can see, but the image is distorted by heat. "Maxie," Archie says weakly, "if we die, I'm kicking your ass in hell." Hadn't he thought, earlier, though, that he and Maxie would be in completely opposite places in hell? Who knows? Who cares? All Archie knows now is heat.

"Archie, if we live, will you forgive me?" The question catches Archie off guard, and he moves his eyes over in Maxie's direction so that he can look at him, forgoing moving his head because he feels so drained and boneless.

"Damn it, I _already_ forgive you, Maxie." Archie takes a moment, runs his dry tongue across his dry lips, "Who knows what I would have done to the Earth if I had managed to awaken Kyogre?"

"Nothing like this," Maxie says, despairing, "nothing like this."

Archie tells Shelly and Matt that he loves them in the fewest amount of words possible and waits.

He doesn't want to die, contrary to how he had felt just a few minutes before. He kind of feels like screaming and clawing at his face, but he knows that that will make death come sooner. Looking around with a subtle sweep of his eyes, Archie notices that the water level is significantly lower than it had been the last time he had looked. There aren't many plants in Sootopolis, but Archie feels that if there were, he would have seen them shrivel away and turn into dust. He finds that the image of water being stolen away from its rightful place is too gut-churning to watch, so he turns his attention back to Maxie, both because he simply likes looking at him and because he fears that if anyone is going to die because of this in this little circle, Maxie will probably be first.

It is while Archie is watching Maxie that, as abruptly and vertiginously as it had come on, the unbearable sunlight fades. Maxie, who had been staring resolutely forward with no flickers of emotion, looks to Archie at this new development, then spins all around, looking everywhere, as if he wants to observe everything around him before he believes what is happening. Archie wonders how he has the strength to do this, mentally and physically; even now that the harsh sunlight is gone, Archie still feels dry and unstable. Maxie immediately walks over to him once he has verified reality and seems to hover in front of him, not quite sure if he can or should touch him. Archie still feels sticky and stripped, but he desperately wants to touch Maxie, to kiss him again after so long.

Still, Archie knows that he, Maxie, and everyone else around are dehydrated and probably have numerous other health issues occurring because of the drought, so he settles for giving Maxie a quick, soft kiss. It's enough for now, enough to establish.

May comes out of the Cave of Origin shortly after, looking considerably less haggard than the rest of her company. When she sees what has become of the outside world, though, her eyes widen and she starts to wobble, her knees weak. "I…" she starts, "oh my Arceus, I… I caught Groudon. If I hadn't…oh Arceus, this wouldn't be…this wouldn't be…."

"No, no, May," Maxie says, gesturing her over because he's not too steady on his feet himself, "no, May, if…if you weren't around, there wouldn't be anything _left_. You saved us, May."

"If I hadn't been so selfish!" May screeches, now getting a better look at what's left of the water in Sootopolis and looking absolutely horrified. She starts to cry, pressing her hands against the dome of her Magma Suit.

"We have to go to a _hospital_ ," Wallace puts in from where he has placed himself in this disaster, his back pressed against the rock walls outside of the Cave of Origin.

"Oh, Arceus," May says, "what does everywhere _else_ look like? Are people…are people _dead_?"

People probably _are_ , Archie thinks, but he doesn't want May to have to think about this. He doesn't want her to blame this on herself or feel its weight like this. She doesn't deserve it. She's a _hero_.

May runs off to get medical assistance for everyone, and Archie watches the water. It looks strange and unnatural at the level it's at; he kind of feels like vomiting.

As Archie learns, being led away to a hospital and not allowing Maxie to go more than ten feet from his side, the devastation caused by the drought is not as bad as it could have been, and it's not as bad as Archie thought it would be. Sootopolis was the epicenter of the drought, and most people hadn't masochistically stood out in the burning sunlight like they were trying to scorch away all of the regrets and misdeeds worn in and underneath their skin. Some people had died, some Pokémon had died (and Archie had nearly cried out in anguish because he knew that they were mostly water and grass type Pokémon), but mostly, everyone was…alright, to some degree.

"You still love me after all of this?" Maxie asks as they are tended to in the same hospital room. Since everything had started to be pieced back together again, Maxie had kept quiet through most things, seeming to think that he had no right to speak on anything. Archie, though, had used strength that he didn't know that he had left to demand that he and Maxie be put together through their treatments.

"Forever," Archie answers, and he doesn't even _want_ not to.

* * *

I want to tell you all where, exactly, this work came from; there are a few different sources of inspiration. First, I was listening to Sia's _Fire Meet Gasoline_ one day, and it occurred to me how much those lyrics relate to Archie and Maxie. So, I was like, hey, why don't I write a song fic? Spoiler alert: I have never written a song fic before and this fic didn't break the chain. However, some of this fic _is_ vaguely inspired by that song. Secondly, I was thinking about, as some people have mentioned before, the fact that-music and general amounts of devastation combined-Maxie seems to fuck up more than Archie does in Ruby/Omega Ruby vs. Sapphire/Alpha Sapphire. I wanted to write something detailing the actual, non-sugarcoated outcomes of Ruby/Omega Ruby and Sapphire/Alpha Sapphire with my own special Hardenshipping twist, which I did. But, I had a dilemma.

Basically, Emerald is my favorite game ever. No, not my favorite _Pokémon_ game ever: my favorite _game_ ever. I tend to completely skip over Ruby and Sapphire when I think about the events of Gen III, and I only really think about Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire because, much to my chagrin, Emerald never got a remake. I was caught between two conflicting desires: to write about Emerald always and forever, or create the story that I wanted. I decided to loosen the stronghold that I've had on Emerald for...probably literally around 11 years? Emerald still has the best ending and storyline in my opinion and is still my end-all be-all, though.

That might seem kind of trivial to you, but here's the thing: this story felt like a big leap for me as a writer. I sort of twisted out of what I normally do. I really do adore this story, and honestly, I adore Archie and Maxie too, even though that's probably obvious.

Also, for my inspiration, I wanted to show the dark side of the Heavy Rainfall and the Drought, as I already mentioned a little bit. The games really don't do the horror of these situations any justice; the water level doesn't rise at _all_ during the Heavy Rainfall, and everyone stands out in the Drought as if the blazing sun isn't sucking out the Earth's moisture. I wanted to write about the rising water levels, the unbearable heat, the dark, ugly effects! People would have been swept away by water in the Heavy Rainfall, the water levels would have dramatically receeded in the Drought. And, honestly, do you think that people would have kept their clothes on if the sun was shining unnaturally intensely? I wanted to see people feeling ill, woozy, and desperate in these conditions. I wanted to make them realistic.

Lastly for my inspirations, I got a lot of my inspiration from this fic from the various songs I was listening to while I wrote it. Obviously I was listening to _Heavy Rainfall_ and _Drought_ some of the time, but I also listened to _Archie, Marry Me_ and _Next of Kin_ by Alvvays.


End file.
